Low pay

Analysis of the PSE-UK survey results finds significant poverty in every kind of location in Scotland with poverty highest in large urban areas and lowest in remote towns though there is strong evidence that access to services is worse in more rural or remote locations.

Mary Daly and Grace Kelly provide a compelling account of how families live with poverty in 'Families and poverty: Everyday life on a low income'. Find out more about books based on the PSE UK research, including 'Breadline Britain - the rise of mass poverty'.

Find out why policy needs to shift from Broken Britain to Britain's broken labour market, and how the commitment to neo-liberalism is resulting in devastating, socially harmful consequences. Explore the Journal papers based on the PSE UK research.

The final report from the PSE qualitative research on the reality of life on low income records how people's perpetual struggles to make meagre budgets stretch eventually this takes its toll on their lives.

Between 2000 and 2013 the pay gap between the top 10 per cent and the bottom 10 per cent of earners rose by 5 per cent, according to a new analysis from the Trades Union Congress, released to mark the beginning of 'Fair Pay Fortnight'.

The government should have a minimum wage target of £6.94 an hour and create a powerful watchdog to help workers escape low pay, according to the conclusions of an inquiry chaired by Sir George Bain, one of the original architects of the UK statutory national minimum wage.

The inquiry's final report was published on the day the coalition government announced the minimum wage would rise by 19p – or 3 per cent – to £6.50 an hour and signalled there would be bigger increases in future years.

The Low Pay Commission has recommended a 3 per cent rise in the statutory minimum wage from 1 October 2014, lifting the main adult hourly rate from £6.31 to £6.50. Given the current inflation forecast of 2.3 per cent, this would represent a small real-terms increase – the first such increase for five years.

In a letter to the Business Secretary, Vince Cable, the Commission said the recommended rise would mean the number of jobs covered by the minimum wage would increase by over a third, to one and a quarter million.

The national minimum wage in the UK is no longer strong enough to tackle the country’s low pay problems, according to a report from the Resolution Foundation think tank.

The report presents the interim findings of a review headed by George Bain, who was originally responsible for overseeing the introduction of the minimum wage in 1998 under the previous Labour government.

Tax credits and benefits play a crucial role in lifting low-paid workers out of poverty, according to new research published by the TUC.

An analysis by economist Howard Reed for the TUC, based on a range of fictional households, shows that low-paid workers need both decent pay rises and help from tax credits and benefits if they are to make ends meet.

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PSE:UK is a major collaboration between the University of Bristol, Heriot-Watt University, The Open University, Queen's University Belfast, University of Glasgow and the University of York working with the National Centre for Social Research and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. ESRC Grant RES-060-25-0052.